April 8th Poem on prompt given by me for TSL's NAPOWRIMO which was Autism Awareness

 

April 8th Poem on Autism Awareness Prompt in TSL's NAPOWRIMO given by

Ampat Koshy

Sujata Mishra

Sangeetha John

Nikhat Mahmood

Angela Baumann

1. Ma, do you remember that shop Thom's in Bangalore. You used to take me there. I would go and hug the refrigerated freezer where they keep all the ice creams. No one understood why except Dad one day when he came and hugged it with me. I wanted to feel the vibration running into and through me. Touch and feel matters a lot to me. Now you can no longer take me there or I touch and feel that, I am too big and they would not let me.

2. Ma, when we go to restaurants, people would look at me strangely when I took the food and smelled it. Don't they know that that is a very good way of knowing for my insides whether it is edible or not? Or lick it. They have lost this art which is olfactory and gustatory but I have not.

3. Ma, you and my sisters and Dad even would all sometimes cry when I bang my head on the wall till it bruises and even breaks into a lump on my forehead but it gives me relief somehow. Do you remember Temple Grandin's torture machine? It is like that. I don't feel the pain and you can't stop me at such times as it would not be safe for me or you. It is my hyposensitivity though it may be dangerous for my brains.

4. Ma, it is true that I am hypersensitive, sometimes a small light can be magnified for me a million times and a small sound. Sometimes music is piercingly sweet but sometimes coughs and sneezes make me go mad with anger. Some surfaces are rough to the touch and some soft as butter. I am swallowed up by a thousand keener sensations of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch that dance in me in a symphony of order and chaos than in neurotypicals and I have no language except body, face, and features and gestures to express it in/with. Ma, I like structure, order, peace, quietness and hate change and crowds. I like large places and spaciousness and huge houses and nature and soothing music.

5. Ma, crazy people want me normal and some want me like this even in other lifetimes and they are all crazy. I am not so different and I struggle to prove to you all that I am l, just like you all, and even my temper tantrums and rolling on the ground and all are only like that of other children.

6. Ma, I wish that there was no such thing called co-morbidities. As if this was not sufficient.

7. Ma, do you remember why they took me out of school. I used to feel claustrophobic in the school bus and attack others and they stopped me, even the special school could not include me due to my claustrophobia in going and coming. Do you remember how I used to bite my hand to not hurt others, Now I Don't do that Ma, I overcame.

8. Ma, when I used to go to ABA I was their star pupil and they would bring in parents to watch me. I was good at piano but my teacher left me. Only my niece and sisters bring my talents out Ma. Why is the world unable to tap my hidden strengths and powers? I am not a savant but I am not a fool either, I come from a family who are all high achievers and want to achieve something too. I just need the right kind of guidance. Ma, am I not the best cook and make the best dosas and am I not good at painting and drawing?

9. Ma, I am naughty and mischievous sometimes and like fun but do not like it when you cry unless I made you cry by being naughty. I get angry and frustrated and low and depressed and have mood swings just like everyone else but try to control it just like everyone else, Ma. Honestly. I love you and everyone and do not want to hurt anyone and don't now but don't know how to explain all this to the world.

10. Ma, I used to run off but somehow always returned, thank God. I am afraid if you all leave me what will happen to me sometimes. Are you afraid too what you will do if I leave you and go away? Earlier? To the place of no return?

11. Ma, all these labels don't mean anything of autism and spectrum and ableism and disability and being challenged, or retarded or mad or insane or crazy or anything, what matters is to love and be loved.

12. Ma, people don't know anything, they think I don't but sometimes I think they are the ones who don't. Mostly I am happy and music is my solace and the company of you and my siblings and caregivers enough though I and you all are rejected by society.

13. Ma, do you remember the pebbles I used to line up endlessly and neatly and the toy cars and the shoes? Why can't the world be like that, simple and orderly?

14. Ma, you have washed me and cleaned every part of me even as I grew to be an adult and taught me how to become self-sufficient in the house in all these things. How can I see God except in you? The way you have seen God in me.

A review of Chaayam Pooshiya Veedu II by me.

https://www.facebook.com/MayaTheFilm/posts/944381693048840

A beautiful review of our new film

Maya: a Spiritual Thriller

by Dr. Ampat Koshy Thank you for the high praise towards the end, Dr. K! We can only hope to some day become worthy of it!

Review of the movie

Maya: a Spiritual Thriller

(The Painted House II)

By Dr. Ampat Koshy

Scripted, Produced, and Directed by Brothers Babusenan or the 'Darker' (as apposite to Dagar) Brothers.

I had watched Painted House 1 and written a review of what was right and wrong with it, according to me. I am happy to watch its sequel, though that is probably not the right word for it.

The Painted House could also mean the house splashed with paint which is more like it.

This house could be reminiscent of the Golden Womb or the void into which God spoke and everything (the paint) came into existence.

The movie is called a spiritual thriller. It has in it a girl called Maya but it is also about Maya. I too have a story about a Maya and so did Irving Stone.

It starts with a quote from the Bhagavatham about how easily Naradan is taken in by Maya despite feeling that he won't be taken in by it after wanting to learn what it is from Krishna.

To understand the beginning more one has to have read Glass Bead Game's ending which has three stories and one is about the nature of reality and illusion according to Hesse's understanding of India, Hinduism, and other things like spirituality and religion.

Naturally, therefore, the character is called Siddharth or Siddhu, referencing Hesse again. But let me call him Sid as an offbeat tribute to Syd Barrett and Sid Vicious, both not connected, though Sid looks a bit like Syd Barrett.

And Gautama Buddha.

Siddharth has invented a dream machine that will bring happiness to all with no side effects and no addiction. The new drug that will be a hit or so he thinks. He is an idealist. He thinks he is going to do mankind a favour with his invention dealing with the mind, psychoanalysis, hypnosis and virtuality and other new fangled things he is obviously deeply impressed by and thinks the world of and is totally into.

He wants to sell his machine to a big company and make money and take the girl he loves, Maya, wherever she wants to, to do whatever they like together, to enjoy the rest of their life together. It is a case of 'true' love. She wants a baby, but he does not. Is it true love?

He goes to the studio to do some final fine-tuning on his machine but a stranger intrudes to get his codes with a knife and ends up getting killed by Siddhu trying to save his own life and invention. The stranger has been sent by the buyer who sees the machine can be used for other possibilities Sid doesn't want it used for or doesn't know about, to build a Multimedia Multiplayer Online Virtual and Augmented Reality Game like no other before where one can not only enter and control one's own dreams but others' dreams too. Sid calls his friend Hari who promises to help him get rid of the body.

The buyer now sends a goon called Victor (lol, again aptly named as he is a total fucking loser as most Xtians are these days and lost and a villain) to Maya to get her, to coerce Siddharth into capitulating.

But Maya escapes with the help of Siddharth and they wander TVPM but surprisingly get a call on Sid's new sim from an old man who says he will help them out of trouble by waking Sid up from his dream. Sid refuses thinking the old man who claims to have been sent by his father is mad.

The two on the run go to a Teena for help but the goon arrives there too. Sid and Maya escape after knocking him out and taking his gun. They go to Hari's house. The rest of the story needs to be seen to be believed.

The movie ends with a talk with the old man where Sid tells him that he sought happiness for himself and all and the result was sorrow for himself and many. The old man laughs and tells him that the real problem is that instead of looking at oneself and seeing what is there inside which may be what we don't like seeing we start playing a role to hide it to ourselves and others and that is Maya as is the search for happiness and that will cease once we stop caring what others think of us and know who we are and accept it.

This ties in with the Hamlet quote in the movie from Shakespeare that can be paraphrased as we all have a face but prepare another.

Apart from the movie's truth which few will grasp, unless they have been enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the movie is perfect in direction, editing and camera work, in its music, dialogues, and pretty near everything except in the acting which is sometimes flawed but the casting is excellent. It harks back to the first movie in the scene of the deserted chair on the beach and the old man who is an 'enlightener', a nomad who is like the avadhoots, in a new guise with a mobile phone, and reminds us of the unenlightened one in the first movie. The ending is perfect as Siddharth himself vanishes with no attempt at revenge or trying to undo the harm his dream machine can cause by having fallen into the wrong hands, saying the old man may be right, after all and that he doesn't know. He has started on his/the real journey to wisdom by admitting he does not know.

Unlike Painted House 1 I am unable to find anything to criticize here and give this gentler, milder, subtler movie with suggestive touches rather than explanatory notes and gestures to lead one to the depths, that is thereby taut, and one that I could not stop watching for even a second a 4.5/5 stars. The story, plot, characterization, themes, and point of view are all perfectly handled here.

People talk of Adoor, Aravindan, Padmakumar, Padmarajan, Shaji Karun, IV Sasi, the director of Adaminte Variyellu K G George, the director of Mani Muzhakkam, Bakkar, Don Palathara, the director of Ponthan Mada (TV Chandran), Shyama Prasad for his TV movie Uyarthezhunelpu or of Chemmeen or P Baskaran, and several others, when talking of Malayalam art film. But for me, its finest offering so far is arguably this movie as it has a beauty that is like that of a single rose flower, perfect and slight and full of softness, colours, and fragrance in all its nuances and grooves and not without its metaphysical thorns for the discerning eye.

The absence of the North of Kerala is noteworthy. The influence of Adam and Eve's myth and Tarkovsky or Parajanov is woven in more subtly here as is that of Zoltan Fabri. Lovely!

Thanks, dear Santosh Babusenan and Satish Babusenan

Click link https://youtu.be/86G7BxhJmDU

to watch the film now